CraveOnline’s 2014 Oscar Nomination Predictions

Who will make the Academy’s short list in an amazingly crowded year? CraveOnline has the answers – we think – in our 2014 Oscar nomination predictions.

The question isn't who will be nominated for an Oscar this year, the question is who will get snubbed. Every year the announcement of the Academy Awards nominations comes with its fair share of WTF moments – Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow got left out of the Best Director race last year, and we still don't know what they were thinking – but typically there are only so many potential nominees in every category worth getting excited about. 2014 is the exception, with all the major categories seemingly flooded with potential, worthy nominees, so narrowing down who seems most likely to make the Oscar short list is really something of an ordeal. We're going to give it a go anyway in this, CraveOnline's 2014 Oscar Nomination Predictions.

We're taking a serious look at all four acting races, along with Best Picture, Best Director and Best Animated Feature, taking all the guild award nominations, critics and audience buzz, and Oscar history into account. (We're sticking to those categories because the technical categories are even trickier, for the most part, and the screenwriting categories are so packed that any predictions would be a crap shoot.) We could go on for pages about this, of course, but ultimately this really is just an exercise in gauging the impact of publicity and reading the Academy voters' collective minds, so we'll try not to bore you with minutia and stick to the bullet points: who we think has the best chance of getting nominated this year, who has the potential to spoil their Oscar season, and which long shots shouldn't be discounted yet, just in case.

How will CraveOnline's 2014 Oscar Nomination Predictions match up to the real thing? Find out when the Academy Award nominations are announced for real on Thursday, January 16, 2014.